Chinese Communist Party faces threat not seen since protests that led to Tiananmen Square massacre
These protests are momentous. Wherever they lead, they are already hugely significant.
China has witnessed bigger protests in Hong Kong, but nothing on the mainland has come close to this since 1989.
Unrest is actually commonplace in China but demonstrations are usually small, localised and easily quashed.
What will worry China’s leadership about these protests is their size, their spread across the country, and their persistence.
The authoritarian Chinese Communist Party has not seen a threat like this since the pro-democracy movements of the late 1980s that culminated in the brutal Tiananmen Square massacre.
The spark this time was an apartment fire in the western city of Urumqi that took at least 10 lives.
But these protests have been coming for months.
Seething anger and resentment at the government’s zero-COVID policies has been building. There is something more fundamental going on, though.
According to popular wisdom, ever since that infamous massacre at Tiananmen, the Chinese Communist Party and the people have had a deal.
We will make you more prosperous and keep society stable, and you will let us get on with running the country.
Stability and prosperity mean everything to the Chinese because, as they have learned since childhood, theirs has been a history of chaos, poverty and upheaval. The people have trusted their government to make sure that stays in the past.
During lockdown, however, the people have begun to doubt their government and its competence to rule.
Under the zero-COVID policy, people have been locked in their communities for months and they fear the state’s heavy handedness is killing people – in this case burned alive, locked in an apartment block in Urumqi.
And making matters worse, under lockdown, the economy has not continued on its ever upward trajectory.
People confront a line of police officers in Shanghai
The Chinese know the rest of the world is moving on from COVID while they are not. The sight on their televisions of World Cup crowds in their thousands without masks is proof of that. That compact between state and people is no longer delivering like it used to and it means we are in uncharted waters.
And more unrest is almost certainly on its way.
President Xi Jinping has staked a huge amount on China’s zero-COVID policy.
Instead of saving lives by importing more effective vaccines from the outside world – but losing face – his government has tried to eliminate the virus wherever it appears with draconian social controls.
But it has not worked and China is battling outbreaks in a multiplying number of cities. If people continue to protest and defy the lockdowns, the virus will spread.
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Rare street protests in China as police charge in
China is not prepared medically, though.
As Professor Kerry Brown, of King’s College London, puts it: “They have to quite quickly put in place emergency measures for the health service to take a kind of spike in numbers that might need to be hospitalised.”
Tracking, tracing and locking down may work with a quiescent population, but for an angry citizenry losing trust in the authorities, it does not.
“If you continue with the policies that have been in place at the moment, you’re going to get more and more of these protests and they could morph into something far more threatening,” Prof Brown added.
What the Chinese government fears most is a nationally organised opposition, knowing it has spelled the doom of dynasties in the past.
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Protesters call for Xi to stand down
When a harmless spiritual movement called Falun Gong went countrywide in the 90s and its followers surrounded Zhongnanhai, the government compound in Beijing, in a peaceful protest, the leadership was terrified and used the most draconian repression to stamp it out.
It has invested billions in an emerging Orwellian surveillance state to anticipate dissent and unrest and prevent it from spreading.
It now faces nationwide unrest erupting spontaneously. It will no doubt use all the resources of its totalitarian state to try to repress it, but faces its biggest challenge in more than three decades as it tries to do so.
At least 60 people have been killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza, health staff have said.
A dozen people were killed near the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, along with eight more living in apartments, according to staff at Shifa hospital, where the bodies were brought.
Six others were killed in southern Gaza when a strike hit their tent in Muwasi, according to the hospital.
Follow latest: ‘Death to America’ chants in Tehran
Palestinians gather at the site of a tent camp that was hit by an Israeli strike. Pic: Reuters
The strikes, which began late on Friday and continued into Saturday morning, came as US President Donald Trump said there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week.
“We’re working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
The site of a strike on Gaza City on Friday. Pic: Reuters/Mahmoud Issa
Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, will arrive in Washington next week for talks on Gaza’s ceasefire, Iran and other subjects, an official told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The last ceasefire agreed back in mid-January ended in March.
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Doctors on the frontline
The war in Gaza was sparked after Hamas launched its attack on Israel in October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 people.
Some 50 hostages remain in Gaza, with fewer than half of them still believed to be alive.
More than 56,000 Palestinians have been killed during the war, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
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The UN has also warned that people in Gaza are “starving”, with Israel allowing a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May after blocking all food for more than two months.
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‘Gaza disinformation campaign is deliberate’
Palestinians have been shot at and killed while on their way to get food at aid sites, according to Gaza’s health officials and witnesses.
Israel’s military said it was investigating incidents in which civilians had been harmed while approaching the sites.
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Tehran to mourn top military commanders, nuclear scientists and others killed in Iran’s 12-day war with Israel.
Iran’s state-run Press TV said the event – dubbed the “funeral procession of the Martyrs of Power” – was held for a total of 60 people, including four women and four children.
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It said at least 16 scientists and 10 senior commanders were among the dead, including the head of the Revolutionary Guard General Hossein Salami and the head of the guard’s ballistic missile programme, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
Their coffins were driven on trucks into the Iranian capital’s Azadi Square adorned with their pictures as well as rose petals and flowers, as crowds waved Iranian flags.
Mourners at the funeral procession in Tehran. Pic: Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters
Mourners dressed in black, while chants of “death to America” and “death to Israel” could be heard.
Attending the funeral were Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and other senior figures, including Ali Shamkhani who was seriously wounded during the conflict and is an adviser to Iran‘s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
There was no immediate sign of the supreme leader in the state broadcast of the funeral.
A woman holds a picture of Iran’s supreme leader. Pic: Reuters
Israel, the only Middle Eastern country widely believed to have nuclear weapons, said its war against Iran aimed to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons.
The US launched strikes on three nuclear enrichment sites in Iran, which Donald Trump said left them “obilterated”.
The Iranian government denies having a nuclear weapons programme and the UN nuclear watchdog, which carries out inspections in Iran, has said it has “no credible indication” of an active, coordinated weapons programme in the country.
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New details on US attacks on Iran
Over the almost two weeks of fighting, Israel claimed it killed around 30 Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists, before a ceasefire went into effect on Tuesday.
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According to Iranian health ministry figures, 610 people were killed on the Iranian side, 13 of whom were children and 49 were women.
Israel’s health ministry said 28 people were killed in Israel and 3,238 injured.
World
Why critics believe Trump’s big win in Supreme Court is ‘terrifying step towards authoritarianism’
As the president himself said, this was a “giant” of a decision – a significant moment to end a week of whiplash-inducing news.
The decision by the US Supreme Court is a big win for President Donald Trump.
By a majority of 6-3, the highest court in the land has ruled that federal judges have been overreaching in their authority by blocking or freezing the executive orders issued by the president.
Over the last few months, a series of presidential actions by Trump have been blocked by injunctions issued by federal district judges.
The federal judges, branded “radical leftist lunatics” by the president, have ruled on numerous individual cases, most involving immigration.
They have then applied their rulings as nationwide injunctions – thus blocking the Trump administration’s policies.
Donald Trump addresses a White House news conference. Pic: AP
“It was a grave threat to democracy frankly,” the president said at a hastily arranged news conference in the White House briefing room.
“Instead of merely ruling on the immediate case before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation,” he said.
In simple terms, this ruling – from a Supreme Court weighted towards conservative judges – frees up the president to push on with his agenda, less opposed by the courts.
“This is such a big day,” the president said.
“It gives power back to people that should have it, including Congress, including the presidency, and it only takes bad power away from judges. It takes bad power, sick power and unfair power.
“And it’s really going to be… a very monumental decision.”
The Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. File pic: AP
The country’s most senior member of the Democratic Party was to the point with his reaction to the ruling.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called it “an unprecedented and terrifying step toward authoritarianism, a grave danger to our democracy, and a predictable move from this extremist MAGA court”.
In a statement, Schumer wrote: “By weakening the power of district courts to check the presidency, the court is not defending the constitution – it’s defacing it.
“This ruling hands Donald Trump yet another green light in his crusade to unravel the foundations of American democracy.”
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Trump’s ‘giant’ Supreme Court win
Federal power in the US is, constitutionally, split equally between the three branches of government – the executive branch (the presidency), the legislative branch (Congress) and the judiciary (the Supreme Court and other federal courts).
They are designed to ensure a separation of power and to ensure that no single branch becomes too powerful.
This ruling was prompted by a case brought over an executive order issued by President Trump on his inauguration day to end birthright citizenship – that constitutional right to be an American citizen if born here.
A federal judge froze the decision, ruling it to be in defiance of the 14th amendment of the constitution.
The Supreme Court has deferred its judgment on this particular case, instead ruling more broadly on the powers of the federal judges.
The court was divided along ideological lines, with conservatives in the majority and liberals in dissent.
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In her dissent, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote: “As I understand the concern, in this clash over the respective powers of two coordinate branches of government, the majority sees a power grab – but not by a presumably lawless executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the constitution.
“Instead, to the majority, the power-hungry actors are… (wait for it)… the district courts.”
Another liberal Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, described the majority ruling by her fellow justices as: “Nothing less than an open invitation for the government to bypass the constitution.”
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump appointed during his first term, shifting the balance of left-right power in the court, led this particular ruling.
Writing for the majority, she said: “When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”
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The focus now for those who deplore this decision will be to apply ‘class action’ – to file lawsuits on behalf of a large group of people rather than applying a single case to the whole nation.
There is no question though that the president and his team will feel significantly emboldened to push through their policy agenda with fewer blocks and barriers.
Read more from Sky News:
DR Congo and Rwanda sign US-brokered peace deal
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The ruling ends a giddy week for the president.
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What’s behind the row on Trump’s Iran strikes?
Last Saturday he ordered the US military to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. Within two days he had forced both Israel and Iran to a ceasefire.
By mid-week he was in The Hague for the NATO summit where the alliance members had agreed to his defence spending demands.
At an Oval Office event late on Friday, where he presided over the signing of a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, he also hinted at a possible ceasefire “within a week” in Gaza.
A truly consequential week seems set to be followed by another.
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